Murder Never Forgets

by Diana O'Hehir

  He tries to gather me in for another kiss, but it turns out to be an aborted effort, one of those European cheek-salutes.

  I listen hard and think I hear the retreat of the observer, or Bambi, rustling off among the poison oak. If I were all alone, I’d feel pretty damn scared. Rob and I teeter and attempt to look at each other, which we can’t do because it’s too dark to see.

  So we let go. And I try to figure out where we are. We seem to have arrived at a wooden structure that tilts or tips loomingly into the trees, and that also maybe has a jutting-out platform scraping our shins. Rob coughs, one of those embarrassed cover-up-a-situation coughs, then he bends and dusts off part of the platform with his jacket sleeve.

  We sit down. Wooden things squeak. I don’t say anything about the kiss. I say, “My father’s been brooding. I know he has. Ever since.”

  He agrees, “Right.”

  “Knowing and not knowing. Does he know?”

  “Search me. Jeez, I hope not.”

  I try talking fast, for something to do. “I’ll get this Mrs. Bascomb to send me Aunt Crystal’s mail. That’ll tell us something.”

  “Good idea.”

  Muffled responses from Rob.

  Part of that piled-up mail to Aunt Crystal will be a postcard from me.

  “He’s started in again about his token,” I say.

  “A small thing that stands for a bigger thing.”

  More silence, then some sneaker-toe-scraping from Rob. The mixture of pine needles and decayed bark makes a funny, gentle, abrasive rustle when it’s scraped.

  I’m telling myself again the terrible story about how Crystal, my own aunt, was the woman on the beach.

  They rolled her in a net and tormented her and then killed her. They. That’s a powerful, amorphous word for me now. They can do murder, they can do cruelty, they can do action, any kind of action. Whatever they think they need, they’ll do. I don’t say all this to Rob; he knows it, anyway.

  Now I look up at the wooden thing we’ve been sitting on. Maybe my eyes have gotten used to the dark, or maybe the moon has grown brighter, but I can sort of see it. First there is the wooden platform that sticks out and gets you under the knees, and then there’s a dark open wallow, what appears to be a big empty space. And finally, right above us, looms a sort of mast or derrick.

  “What is that?” I gesture up.

  He doesn’t answer right away. He leans over and picks up something, bounces it around in his hand for a minute, and then stands up. Pulls his arm back; he can aim, even in the dark. And does one of those neat masculine overhanded throws. There’s a distant, echoing clunk. “I think it’s a well.”

  The idea of a well seems strange and, somehow in tune with this whole dislocated evening. We sit looking up at the superstructure for a while. At last, we stand up and go off slowly, holding on to each other, tripping over roots and fallen tree limbs.

  Chapter 18

  You’d think then I’d have more sense, the next day, than to go for a walk along the bluff that features in Daddy’s pastel painting. The bluff above our net-woman beach.

  Here I am though, making myself miserable, trotting along the route past the garbage cans and across the highway and over the meadow and doing a running commentary with myself, like, Let’s watch how Crystal got there.

  I just feel I have to see it.

  It’s the day after Rob’s and my evening session in the woods. I’ve turned Daddy over to Belle with sharp instructions about Please, please keep a good watch on him; he’s not reliable, and things are weird here. And I’m going out to think and figure, how does it all connect?

  She came along this path, and then went off onto that other path that heads south toward the steps.

  She went with three other people.

  My dad decided he had to watch her. He knew to keep his movements careful and quiet. He crawled through the drain pipe. He was cautious. He went this way, and here I am also at that same place, the entrance to the culvert. I’m not going to shimmy my way inside that pipe, I’ll walk along the top. And I start out, feeling the grass under my shoes and below that the metal of the pipe.

  That was an okay walk up to the forest last night in spite of how awful I was feeling.

  I’m thinking so hard that I’m pretty startled when I realize someone’s sitting just a few feet away from me, on the ground at the end of the pipe, someone crouched on the bluff, a figure with its feet up, jacket looped around shoulders, a bulky figure. It looks like a man.

  Danger, I decide, and am half-turned to get out of there, but too late. He can see me better than I can see him because for me he’s just a shape against the sun. He raises a hand. “Hi,” he announces, cheerful and perky. He adds something that sounds like, “Long time no see.” And maybe, is it possible, “Gorgeous lady.” Yes, all right, I get it. This person is Dr. Kittredge.

  I stop, still standing on top of the drainage pipe, which puts me higher than him. I say, “What in hell are you doing here?”

  “Why, darlin’, what a way to greet an old, old friend.” I bet he’s smiling, but I can’t see that because of the sun-haze. Now he moves a hand, he pats a piece of grass. “Come sit. I’ve got a bottle, and I’ve got a book by our new poet laureate who writes pretty good, and I’ve got, coming up, a nice sunset, and all I need is a lovely lady. In this interesting spot. Because that is an interesting beach down there, did you know that?”

  Of course I don’t answer, and he goes on, “Because maybe the famous Sir Francis Drake beached right down there, on that very beach, on that golden strip of golden sand.” He pats the grass beside him some more.

  Can I get away from here in time, I think, with no idea of in time for what, and decide I can’t, and then think, Probably you came to admire the place where you murdered my aunt, and now you want to murder me, and then I speak aloud and say, “Belle and Mrs. Cohen both know I came out here; Mrs. Cohen is going to phone in a minute.

  “I asked her to check up on me,” I lie, reinforcing things, in case I’ve not made myself clear. And then I add another thought-dart: So, if you’re planning to push me off that cliff don’t. Now is not a good time. I’ve got friends. They’re almost here . . .

  “What is the matter with you?” Dr. Kittredge asks. He has shifted position so he’s no longer backed up against the sun, and now I can see his face. He has that big, florid, phony actor’s face that’s great for showing emotion. He contracts his brows and pulls down his mouth-corners. Looks hurt and puzzled. “You act . . .” He seems genuinely to be trying to sort this out. “Hey, darling, you look as if I did something. I mean, sweetheart, really. I’ve been a gentleman with you, Carla. Always. You can’t say I haven’t. Never so much as a single pass.”

  I say, “Oh, shut up.” I’m not expressing myself well today, that’s for sure. Suddenly this isn’t a potential murderer but only Dr. Stupid Kittredge, over-testosteroned and over-buttressed by his corny male charm. Probably not a murderer because he’s much too certain he’s God’s ultimate gift to women. I don’t like it one bit that he’s here ahead of me at Suspicion Beach, but that doesn’t mean much.

  I climb off the top of my drain pipe. “Move over,” I say, “and share what you’ve got in your bottle.”

  Don’t tell me alcohol isn’t an antidote for misery. For a little while, getting drunk will make you forget even things like your aunt, rolled in a net, face-down on the sand, bound round and round with gold nylon cord.

  What he has in the bottle is Italian red, which is okay with me.

  “Well, here’s to you, bella donna,” Kittredge says, wiping the neck of the bottle off on his sleeve. I’ll say this for him, he’s not completely obtuse. He looks at me sideways and asks, “You okay, child?” And then hands me the bottle and says, “Wish I had a glass.” And then asks, “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Absolutely not.” The wine is the kind that back at Santa Cruz we called milk-bottle red, because of those cardboard milk-bottle-type containers.

&
nbsp; “Did you know you were being followed?” Kittredge asks without preamble. “When you walked along the path?”

  I take a swig of milk-bottle red and ask, “Followed? What do you mean?” And then stop because of course I understand the word.

  “Somebody about forty feet behind you. Diving behind bushes.”

  I say, “Um.”

  I make a conscious decision. I’m paranoid enough already. I won’t listen to this. That’s Kittredge talking. He wants to scare me, he wants power over me.

  After a pause he tries some more, “You sure lead a busy life. You gotta be careful of that stalker stuff. I had a patient whose husband . . .”

  I halfway tune out his story about a broken cheekbone. Thinking “The Ride of the Valkyrie” at the back of your brain works sometimes for tuning out.

  Kittredge notices I’ve gotten silent. “Okay, okay,” he says. After a minute he asks, “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s okay.” I think about it and have to confirm, yes, Daddy is moderately all right; I’m the one that isn’t.

  “I’ve got a whole new batch of memory-enhancing drugs,” Kittredge says. “Arrived last week.”

  Are we on to this again? “No memory enhancement. Don’t even think about it.”

  “They’re doing good things all the time.”

  “Not to my father, they’re not.”

  “Tests on one of these are real interesting.”

  I hand the bottle back and make myself speak very slowly and firmly with space between each word cluster. “Leave him. Alone. Don’t. Give him. Anything new.”

  “All right. Absolutely. Sure. But why?”

  Because there’s too much talk about this lately, and I trust almost nobody, and especially not you, you sexy fat oaf. Because everybody is trying to interfere. Because I’m suspicious. Why do you want to enhance my father’s memory? Aloud, I say, “He’s hit a—what do you call it?—plateau. He’s doing fine.”

  “You’re right, absolutely. A plateau. Like I said to you before, that’s what makes it so sad. I mean, he’s almost there. He and I had a real good discussion just the other day about that phrase in Spell 122, ‘I have gone in as a falcon; I have come out as a phoenix.’ The falcon, you know, a bird of prey that dives, bang, and the phoenix, a being that rises from the dead, except your dad doesn’t think the ancient Egyptians saw the phoenix like that. Carla, I wish I’da known him in his prime; he must have been something. Well, I just think maybe a little prompting with some medication, keep it real mild at this point . . .”

  Kittredge is cuddling the wine, and I really need it.

  “Cut it out. Don’t mention it one more time. And hand that bottle back.”

  He wipes the neck again on his sleeve and asks, professionally plaintive, “So, what do I do to get this lady to call me Patrick?”

  “Dr. Kittredge,” I underline his title heavily, “what’s going to happen next at the Manor?”

  “Well, dear, it’s good you asked because I been worrying about that, and I think, an’ I’m sorry, really sorry to say it, because I love the idea of the Manor—did I ever tell you that?”

  “Yes, Dr. Kittredge, you told me.”

  “Jesus, will I never be Patrick to her at all? Well, I love the Manor, an’ I love the idea of it, an elegant, dignified place for older folk. I was one of the big fighters for a Manor even existin’, but times change, and we change with them, and maybe, I’m thinkin’, we’re all going to have to jump ship. Close the whole operation up.”

  I say, “Urp,” and feel a lurch inside. First we’ve got a Manor where my father can live, but we’re scared to be in it. And now, ahead, no Manor.

  “There’s a group,” Dr. K. goes on, “wants to buy everything.”

  “Somebody wants to buy it?” I almost drop the milk-bottle red, which of course isn’t in a cardboard milk bottle but in a real glass bottle that would shatter. But this buy-out plan seems like the last thing I’d have suspected.

  “Yes, love. Fork over cash. Take possession.”

  “But, why? It can’t be profitable?”

  “Nope. Right now it’s not profitable one bit. These purchasin’ folks are real estate. Gonna make everything over. Build a model town or some garbage. I haven’t kept that good track, I mean, as a director I knew they were out there, but I just never took it seriously, couldn’t believe it, idiotic idea, model town? A million miles from God? Anyway, now, with things so bad, some directors are dyin’ to sell. Hard on the residents.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “Right.”

  “Believe it, hard on me, too. Incidentally, dear, where’re your friends?”

  “What?” It takes me a minute to catch on. At first, I think he means Rob, and then I remember that five minutes ago I told him Mrs. Cohen or Belle would be calling me. “Oh,” I say. “Mrs. Cohen? Forgets. You know.” Kittredge and I are comfortably silent around this lie. I give him back his bottle. “Tell me more about selling the Manor.”

  “I don’t know any more. It’s been in the background for six months, maybe, but I never took it seriously, and then these accidents and lawsuits started piling up, and now I guess it is serious. I mean, the deal might go through. I feel bad, even though I, personally, got other possibilities for my future. Sisal, though, really wants to hang in. Not sell. Die on the barricades. Strong-minded lady.” The doctor’s voice holds a smile, reminiscent of happy office-couch afternoons with Mrs. Sisal.

  “I wish we had something to eat,” I say. “Have you got a sandwich? Or crackers? Some cookies?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m being unprecedentedly generous with this bottle.” He makes a noise by blowing into it. “An’ you do have to admit,” he goes on. “The whole thing with this buy-out proposal looks peculiar. We been having a kind of industrial sabotage, so to speak, for months now, accidents, lawsuits, dirty tricks all over the place, got everybody scared shitless—excuse me, dear—get the clients starting to leave and sue, and the Manor set up for bankruptcy, and then, bingo, enter the evil real estaters to buy it up for a song.”

  “What about Mona?” I ask. “That wasn’t industrial sabotage?”

  “Hey, Jesus, no. Have you asked around about that busy Mona bee? She was another, different story; dealt drugs, and profited big time, and screwed everybody. With a little blackmail for extras. Mona was not a nice lady. Careless, too. But she wasn’t part of this buy-out deal. Anybody coulda killed her.

  “We are almost finished with this bottle, dear. One teeny hit left inside for each of us.”

  “Thank you,” I reach out my hand. “Thanks for sharing, like we say.”

  “We do, don’t we?”

  For a minute I debate confiding in Dr. Kittredge about Aunt Crystal. Lying in the grass beside somebody you’re sharing a bottle with is a bonding experience, even if you halfway suspect the person of a major crime. The combination of grass and sea air and milk-bottle red dulls your perceptions. I think about this for half a second and then mentally shake myself and return to normal.

  Tomorrow, I announce to myself, I’ll get serious about things. I have to rethink my whole position here.

  I climb to my feet. “Thanks for the wine.”

  He groans. “Honey, I’m stuck here. Flat on my back. You’re gonna have to give me a hand up.”

  “Boy,” he says, when he’s halfway standing and my hand is in his, “boy, I sure yearn to see that Coffin Lid Text of your dad’s. Talkin’ to him an’ readin’ his book some. Fascinatin’ stuff. Around here some place, isn’t it?”

  “It’s at Egypt Regained, a museum in a place called Homeland,” I say shortly. I don’t know what to make of Kittredge’s interest in Daddy’s Egyptian studies. I think it has to be phony. Everything else about the doctor screams phony, or at least half-phony.

  And I tell myself again that I’ve never met anybody except another archaeologist who would read a book about fourteen obscure hieroglyphs.

  Just the same, Dr. Kittredge and I walk companionably back to the Manor, with
him being good and only making his hand stray into the small of my back twice or maybe three times, and me swatting at him and saying absentmindedly, “Cut it out, will you?”

  So I am standing there, a little drunk, thinking about our grassy session and wondering if I’ve picked up any deer ticks, when the door across the steps from Kittredge’s opens to emit Mrs. Sisal.

  “Well, now,” she says.

  I say, “Hello, Mrs. Sisal.”

  She repeats, “Well.” She is looking as she always does, high-end expensive, but casually so, for at-home living, in a simple, little wide-pants outfit with a simple, little, hand-woven silk shirt and some chunky beads. Her asymmetrical haircut glimmers, straight and shiny-black.

  I’m waiting for a crack about me and Kittredge and about how I reek of red wine, and what am I doing here anyway in the better residential part of the Manor, but what she says is, “Has he been feeding you his fairy story about the takeover?”

  I stare and make unintelligent noises, as in, “Huh?”

  “I guess he really believes that,” she says. “But mostly he made it up. Patrick likes to invent.”

  It occurs to me that Mrs. Sisal is drunker than I am.

  “Patrick the giant killer,” she says. “Did you have a nice, nice walk?”

  “It was okay.” I’m wondering how in hell I’m going to get out of here. A jealous Mrs. Sisal could be a major problem. Even the hair-pulling, assaultive kind.

  But she doesn’t seem interested in that side of things. She wants to talk about the takeover. Or what she describes as the nontakeover. “Don’t believe him. All that garbage about somebody buying something. He made it up.” She tucks a strand of the straight, very black hair behind an ear and leans against her doorjamb. A little unsteady but handsome, like a New York Times fashion spread. “Makes him feel good. And he’s a liar. He’ll talk endlessly about what . . . oh, hell, who cares?” She fixes on me as if she has just noticed me. “So how are things for you, Miss Dutiful Daughter?”